It is well recognized that security and high yield bond prices change constantly. In order to keep up with the changes in the price and demand for securities and high yield bonds, brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants seek up-to-date securities market information. Securities market information aids these market participants in deciding whether to hold, purchase or sell a particular security or high yield bond. Brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants need to know the accurate price and demand for an individual security or high yield bond.
Each individual security or high yield bond is unique. The securities market variables which may affect the price and demand for one particular security may not affect the price and demand for another security. Therefore, it is critical that brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants have access to a wide array of securities market information as quickly as possible.
Securities market information encompasses several types of information that may affect the price or demand of a security or high yield bond. This information may be grouped into three categories: financial, descriptive and market data. Financial data may include information concerning revenue, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization and special charges (EBITDA), and leverage ratio (Debt/EBITDA). Descriptive data includes, but is not limited to, S&P rating, Moody's rating, amount outstanding, coupon rate, maturity, and related statistics. Market related data includes, but is not limited to, last price, last yield to worst and spread to worst.
A variety of research firms, financial market sources (e.g. NYSE, AMEX, Nasdaq-FIPS), and pricing firms (e.g. Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) and Muller Data) collect securities market pricing and other information. In turn, brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants rely on financial market sources and pricing firms to obtain the latest securities market information collected from that particular source.
Presently, brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants rely principally on each other (other market participants) to determine the fair value of a security or bond via telephonic communication. This method is very time consuming, labor intensive and inexact. In fact, many over-the-counter markets still work as they did over twenty years ago—when a trader or salesperson wants to communicate market information or “color” to his/her co-workers, he/she simply stands up and shouts it to his co-workers. This method of obtaining and sharing securities market information is also limiting because brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants may only obtain a limited amount of information from the limited number of people that he/she can manually query. Further, brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants must contact several different sources to obtain different types of securities market information. This type of researching can take hours, or even days, which creates the possibility for extremely costly lost opportunities within financial markets.
Currently, there are three major purveyors of financial information concerning securities on the basis of installed terminals: Reuters, Bloomberg, and Bridge. All three services offer Internet-based versions of their products. These services allow their users access to certain types of financial information that is maintained within their system. However, these services are limited in their ability to display financial information concerning a particular security, because they only display information from one pricing source at a time. A broker, trader, salesperson, researcher, portfolio manager or other market participant that uses one of these services would have to conduct multiple time consuming searches to obtain different types of pricing and descriptive information. Also, these three sources do not display co-mingled pricing information.
In today's fast pace securities and high yield bond markets, the challenge for brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants is to obtain all available securities market information as quickly and efficiently as possible. Although a number of patents, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,101,353, to Lupien et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,245, to Patterson, Jr. et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,244, to Huberman, U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,751 to Rivette et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,592,375 to Salmon et al. disclose automated systems for trading and valuing securities, the above-mentioned patents do not provide access to a variety of securities market information in one centrally located storage system. The current invention allows brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants to access and search, in one central standardized database, securities market pricing, descriptive and financial information from a variety of external and internal (via “groupware” features) sources in real-time, thus quickly providing brokers, traders, salespeople, researchers, portfolio managers and other market participants with critical information.